Have you ever had a co-worker who royally screwed things up on a daily basis?

I have! And let me tell you, that is not a fun experience… You end up spending so much time fixing the other person’s problems that you can’t ever get any of your own work done. And you get stuck in a terrible cycle until you’re totally burned out and you helplessly throw your hands up.

Ugh!

A woman who works in a dental office explained why a co-worker is really dragging her down lately.

Let’s take a look!

My boss brought back the employee who cost us $50K, and now I’m expected to clean up after her.

“I started a dental job about six months ago as a billing specialist.

The office is financially struggling, there are basically no systems in place, and the owner honestly doesn’t act like an owner.

Because I have a management background, the owner has asked me to take on a lot of management responsibilities, hiring, training, leading meetings, dealing with staff schedules, etc.

Everyone basically refers to me as the office manager, even though that’s not my title.

There’s a big problem…

The biggest issue has been the front desk.

The owner had an employee, Tyla, running it since November 2025.

She wasn’t verifying insurance, following up on pre-auths, collecting the correct amounts, etc.

This wasn’t chump change!

I showed the owner how much money we were losing and gave him a spreadsheet showing roughly $50k in lost revenue. (But in his mind she still was closing cases and bringing money in).

She was eventually fired, but not really because of her work. She was also a terrible coworker and had gotten multiple complaints and bad Google reviews. Several patients told me they were relieved she was gone and some said they would leave the practice if they had to deal with her again.

Some things never change…

For the past two weeks, I’ve been helping with the front desk, and I discovered even more things that weren’t being done:

Pre-auths sitting there since April with no patient follow-up.
Pre-auths that were never submitted.
Patients waiting weeks for insurance verification that I could do in 30 seconds.
Lab cases sitting in a closet for months.
Recall patients never contacted.
Patients not being scheduled for their 6-month appointments.
Incorrect/incomplete insurance breakdowns.

Basically, I was finding revenue sitting right in front of us because nobody was following up.

Then I had a car emergency and couldn’t come to work one day. The new front desk employee I hired also couldn’t come in because of a death in her family.

Oh, no!

HE BROUGHT TYLA BACK.

Now I’m back to fixing her mistakes, and patients are already refusing to deal with her and asking specifically for me. I’m a billing specialist, but I’ve become the person responsible for cleaning up the front desk whenever something goes wrong.

Yesterday I found the official job descriptions for everyone.

Mine says Billing Specialist and lists billing duties. Meanwhile, the owner and I have discussed me moving into management once the office is financially stable enough to give me the raise/title.

Now he wants to have a meeting Monday to go over everyone’s job descriptions.

She’s done dealing with this chaos!

At this point, I’m considering telling him that if I’m officially a Billing Specialist, then that’s the job I’m going to do. I’m not going to keep doing front desk work, fixing other people’s mistakes, or taking on management responsibilities without the title/pay.

I’m also already looking for another job, so I’m done burning myself out trying to save this office.

My question is: am I wrong for drawing this boundary?

He also just hired a marketing company that’s supposed to bring in a lot more patients.

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He’s expecting around 25 treatment plans a week, but if Tyla can’t handle the current workload, how is that supposed to work?

Would you bring that up in the meeting, or would that be pushing it?”

Let’s see what folks had to say about this on Reddit.

This person offered some advice.

Another individual weighed in.

This Reddit user spoke up.

Another person shared their thoughts.

And this reader made a good point.

Woof! What a horrible situation! I’d be losing my marbles if I were her!

She’s being overworked and underpaid!